I opened my mouth, prepared to offer my sympathy. To tell him we didn’t need to rush anything. That I could go back to Seattle if that’s what he needed, and give him space, and let him slide back into the life he had already made for himself.
Instead, only one word came out. “Good.”
Those dark eyes popped open. “Good?”
I nodded. “Yes, good. I don’t want you to be anything other than exactly who and what you are. If you want to be funny or sharp or sarcastic or anything else, do it, but not because you’re hiding something else. And if you want to be sad or happy or just feel nothing at all for a moment, I want you to do that too. I want you to feel safe being every side of yourself with me, Ronan. Because that’s…”—I bit my lip, feeling the last thing I had to say sticking in my throat—“that’s what you do for me.”
His mouth dropped, like he honestly couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Laney, you don’t understand?—”
I slid my hand down his arm, then took his hand to pull myself forward, so that we were face to face, though our height difference forced me to look up into that wide, shocked gaze. “I do understand. Better than you think. Ronan, I’ve been sleepwalking through my own life for more than a year. I didn’t just come to Boston for you—I came for me too. Because I needed a change, and also because you forced me to, I don’t know, wake up. This is hard. I know that. But maybe we are the change each other needs. But it won’t have a chance at all if we aren’t real with each other about what we need. Right?”
“What we need,” he murmured as he moved his hands up and down my arms, stroking my skin almost meditatively. “And what do you need right now?”
Oh, no. He wasn’t getting out of this that easily.
I reached up and took his chin, forcing him to look at me. “Right now, I need you to communicate. You’re obviously struggling. I need you to tell me what you need. And then we’ll go from there.”
“What I need.” He repeated the statement softly, like he was testing it on his tongue. “What I need.”
He pulled his chin out of my grasp, then ran his hands back down my arms one more time to catch my fingers. Then, gently, he pulled them both behind my back, crossed my wrists, and held them there with one hand while he used his other to tug the towel off my head.
“Right now,” he said as he tucked a tendril of wet hair behind my ear, “I need to be in control. Can you let me do that?”
Anticipation roared in my ears. “I—yes?”
Something sparked in his expression. “Well, all right then.” Keeping my hands where they were, he leaned to the side to runhis lips over the shell of my ear. “Have you made an appointment with the doctor yet?”
I shivered at the contact. “N-no.”
For that, I received a sharp nip on my lobe that made me squeak.
“Tomorrow.” His order was absolute. “Don’t make me worry about you anymore than I have to, all right?”
I nodded, and he moved to give my other ear the same treatment before bending his legs to pick me up in one sudden movement, urging my legs around his waist.
“Upstairs,” he murmured before giving me another kiss that made time stop. “I need room.”
He kissed me the rest of the way up, releasing my hands only long enough to push me against another wall of build-in bookshelves. This one was full of Greek and Roman dramas, mostly tragedies. Probably every translation of Sophocles ever made, along with Aeschylus, Livius Andronicus, and Seneca.
Suddenly, he grabbed my hands and pulled them above my head, urging me to take hold of the edge of one of the shelves.
“Have you ever used a safe word, Laney?”
“I—once, yes.”
I didn’t elaborate. The one and only time Derek and I had even tried to venture into BDSM territory was after he convinced me to watch 50 Shades of Grey with him, thinking it would make me all hot and bothered. It did, but not because of the sex scenes. I got more out of imagining it was Jamie Dornan and his gymnastics-developed abs blindfolding me than my own boyfriend.
“What do you think about a theme? Elysium for good, Styx for slow down, Tartarus for stop?” He bent down and pressed a kiss to my right clavicle.
For a moment, it was hard to breathe. Still, I shook my head. “I think we talk too much about Classics for that to work, don’t you?”
Another kiss landed on the other side of my neck. “I see what you mean. So, the boring color system then?”
I nodded, though my skin tingled with anticipation. “Boring or logical?”
“Red, yellow, green. Got it?” His mouth returned to mine, but he didn’t kiss me as he waited for my response.
“Got it,” I replied, reduced to a breath.
